THE BUILDING INDUSTRY AND BUILDING WORKERS

Written:Written on May 4 (17), 1913Published:Published on May 9, 1913 inPravdaNo. 105.

      Printed from thePravdatext.

      Signed:F..Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1971,

      Moscow,Volume 36,

      pages236-237.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Russia’sindustrial boom over the last few years has
been accompanied by the usual rapid development of the
building industry.Vestnik
Finansov[1]recently carried
out a poll among the municipal authorities in 158 towns
of Russia on this question. Mr. Veselovsky inRusskoye
Slovogives the following data from the poll: annual
construction and remodelling of houses:

in1907 ............ 11,961

” 1908 ............13,709

” 1909 ............15,093

” 1910 ............10,674

Insome three years, the building industry has expanded
nearly 50 per cent! That the capitalists are making vast
profits on this industrial boom can be seen from the prices
of bricks. The prices reach 33 rubles per thousand in
St. Petersburg, and 36 rubles in the more industrialised
Moscow.

Municipalbrickworks exist in only 50 or 60 towns, so
that the possibility of combating the insatiable appetites
of the building capitalists is insignificant. And, for that
matter, our towns, as a result of the property franchise,
the complete absence of free elections, etc., have been
completely handed over to a handful of money-bags, who
take municipal interests to be those of their own pockets.

Theseries of notorious collapses of houses under
construction shows the incredibly scandalous practices in
building, the carelessness and the total disregard for
human life. Intensified building activity, with thousands
and thousands of rubles passing into the pockets ofcontractors, engineers, capitalists, and the mass of sacrifices
offered up by the workers on the altar of capital—that
is what the industrial “boom” means.

Andwhat of the position of the hundreds of thousands
of building workers?

Welearn the following about their wages from the poll.
The day’s wage of a building worker varies with the size
of the town as follows:

PopulationDay’s wage of a building worker

Under 5,000 . .

5,000–10,000 . .

10,000–25,000 . .

25,000–50,000 . .

50,000–75,000 . .

75,000–100,000 . .

100,000 and over . .

1 ruble 33 kopeks
1 ” 36 ”
1 ” 41 ”
1 ” 53 ”
1 ” 56 ”
1 ” 87 ”
1 ” 80 ”

Evenin the biggest cities, the worker’s wage does not
reach 2 rubles a day! One can imagine what these workers
suffer with the present high cost of living, when very often
they have to maintain a family in another town or in the
country. Moreover, building work is seasonal, it does
not continue the year round. During the few months of
employment, the worker must earn enough to maintain
himself and his family throughout the year.

Thesefigures are evidence of the workers’ poverty and
utter insecurity.

Itis more difficult for building workers to unite and
get organised than for workers in factories. All the more
insistently should workers in the van campaign for the
education and organisation of building workers, who can
seek help nowhere but from their own workers’ paper, their
own workers’ trade union, and their own more developed
proletarian comrades.

[1]VestnikFinansov, Promyshlennosti i Torgovli(Finance, Industry
and Trade Messenger)—a weekly of the Ministry of Finance,
published in St. Petersburg from 1885 to 1917.